blogoversary #15

It occurred to me the other night, as I was wrapping up my last post, that somehow in March (becuase you know, apocalypse) I forgot to celebrate this little blog's 15th birthday.  She's a teenager now, and I feel better the past couple years for not neglecting her quite so much as previous years  Her earlier sibling, a Xanga (a sort of low budget Live Journal, was her predecessor, where from 2002-2005, I began my online journaling exploits completely new to the interneting game, it being at least another year before I dipped my toe in MySpace and several more years until I joined facebook.   The posts on Xanga, which only exist somewhere in some files in my dropbox rescued from the platform before it shut down, are mostly filled with personal diary-like posts and maybe occasional drafts.    I met a lot of poets I would get to know in the blog world later there first, but my 2005 or so, blogger was the place to be, so I picked up my tent stakes, pitched them here, and have been here ever since.  

Of course, facebook came along and most poets who had blogs moved onto shorter form content, but some of us stayed, even though it wasn't always clear that anyone was reading (I get a decent amount of hits in my analytics, but hard to know how many are readers and how many are bots.)  Over the years, the subject matter changed a bit, ranging from MFA and po-biz rants in the aughts to more thrifting and style related content when running the etsy shop.  I still did a fair bit of diary writing, but posts now feel more coherent and less rambly than a decade ago.  I post less drafts, but do talk about process a bit more on individual projects. When I began in 2005, I was just beginning to make forays in visual mediums, so those develop over the years. The press, when we only released a handful of books per year to a more regular schedule of titles. While much of the newsier bits and random linkage have moved to facebook or twitter, I still like the long form and the stillness and depth of blogging. 

So here's to another 15 years of content, whatever that looks like...